{"id":165,"date":"2013-09-23T22:31:16","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T05:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/?p=165"},"modified":"2020-11-22T22:32:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T06:32:44","slug":"wake-up-and-salute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"Wake Up and Salute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This last weekend I woke up 25 years in the past. I was a Mormon missionary in Northern Germany and I tripped into some kind of sinkhole wondering what the fuck I was doing selling complete strangers on a megalomaniac modern-day messiah. I was breaking the mission rules by indulging in a contraband CD player, hanging out at record stores, and feeling like a lie. As a missionary there were rules of morality to which I was obliged to adhere, such as zero personal music, especially not popular wordly music. I came onto the missionary scene with a great deal of my own favorite indulgences already, and music proved to tip the balance for me off of righteousness and god. Small g.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/gallery\/var\/thumbs\/Misc\/peace.jpg?m=1380000533\"><\/p>\n<p>Despite the promise of the spirit and celestial glory I felt a more personal and relevant connection with Simple Minds, U2 and The Smiths. In some suburb of Hamburg, where I was keeping a day job of harassing other day-jobbing Germans about religion, I found a record store with a poster of &#8216;The The&#8217; in the window. The record was &#8216;Mind Bomb&#8217; &#8211; prescient for all the Islamic turmoil we face today. The imagery in the artwork was brash and shocking &#8211; a white dove of peace, drenched in blood, pierced through by a belligerent bayonet. The first track, opening with a fugue of western percussion and lilting middle-eastern prayers, pushed to open my eyes; to look and SEE religion. See &#8220;whose words have been twisted beyond recognition.&#8221; Looking back within the lucid dream I see that the message must have been enough to wake me up.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LnQNrBLnE00?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The incident this last weekend was just watching the aimless indy film &#8220;Slacker&#8221; and,  coincidentally, some edgy, amateur actors walking past a record store with the &#8216;Mind Bomb&#8217; poster up in the window. I hardly remember what the sum of the autistic, Austin nut-jobs were rambling on about, but for sure Matt Johnson and Johnny Marr were staring out, disapproving of mankind. I never heard this record on the radio, never saw a video on MTV, and never heard anyone mention the music, but it set deeply in my foundation over the decades. Waking up into this memory I realized what an impact it made on me and how it was probably a tipping point for my dead soul. How can I mourn my soul for feeling the humanity of the Muslim prayer and Sinead O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s howling love dirge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This last weekend I woke up 25 years in the past. I was a Mormon missionary in Northern Germany and I tripped into some kind of sinkhole wondering what the fuck I was doing selling complete strangers on a megalomaniac &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/?p=165\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/senseandsound.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}